Whiteout

It was snowing again, snowing without cease, the wild tumbling of flakes spinning vertiginous circles around me until I fell forward onto my knees, my crimson skirts spreading around me in a vivid flush of colour, a pool of blood.
Why did I come here? a voice inside me howled above the wailing of the wind. Why did I come to this godforsaken no-man's-land, treading this line where no-one is an enemy and no-one is a friend?
And most of all- why me?

Numb fingers carving desperate runnels in the hard-packed snow, I tried to cling on to what Nadhja had said to me that night at the palace. "The doom is yours," she said in a matter-of-fact tone as I stood before the gilt-edged looking-glass. "You are the doom-bringer. It is right that you should sacrifice your life. It what you were made to do and you should be proud."
"Proud?" I stormed, breathless and indignant in the boned corset, trying to turn round, to spit at her, to scratch her inscrutable eyes out like a stable cat.
She was stronger than she looked; her gnarled hands pinned my wrists to my sides. I cursed her a dozen times; a smouldering string of hateful cantrips. She said "Nyaae" almost lazily, making them crumble into glowing cinders, and slapped my cheek with casual violence. Burning tears sprang to my eyes and spilled, glittering in the thin candlelight.
And then Nadhja stepped forward to join me at the mirror, her withered old face grotesque and grinning. Gripping my chin, she forced me to stare at my reflection in the smoke-blackened, age-spotted glass. I looked like a wraith, skin alabaster, eyes so cold and dead, cold as black ice. I did not recognise myself. She held a string of pearls to my throat.
"There now," she said, stroking the tumbled copper of my hair as if I was her own dear child. "Isn't that better?"

You are the doom-bringer.
It did not seem fair to me even now, even after all I had been forced to understand, everything that had been revealed. I knew what it would cost the Dusk and what it would gain for the Dawn. I knew everything. Yet I knew nothing. I turned my head, clear and simple and without emotion, though tears were freezing in my lashes.
Somewhere through the swathes of my cloak I could feel the minute sharpness of the marble-handled dagger Alester had given me upon parting. At the remembrance a keening pain needled through my side as though I were wounded. So much he had promised me as we lay there, intertwined like the roots of ancient trees, whispering into the darkness until I could almost reach out and touch the fantasies- a glorious summer, the fruits ripe for picking and the grass soft and springy under our bare feet; a grand wedding with fine dresses of satin and silk and the Elders smiling their approval and the little ones scattering blossom petals like summer snow; a manor of our own far, far away from cold, and misery, and suffering, and responsibility. We were like children, caught up in our impossible dreams of redemption and peace. I thought I prized love above everything else. But when the time came and the sacrifice had to be made, I lost my heart, I lost my soul, I lost my love. I kissed Alester goodbye with a hard smile on my lips and bit back the sobs and froze there and then, an ice queen, so as never to have to lose ever again. But of course I did; we all did.

My eyes, narrowed against the aching whiteness of the snow, scanned the horizon. They would be coming for me soon. I knew it. Death was a black-cloaked rider upon a silver-grey stallion. He might come quick and silent, becoming one with the darkness to suddenly hold his scythe to my throat. He might claim my soul for his own and taunt me into madness before dragging my wreckage after him into the echoing halls and chambers of the underworld. He might court me like a lover until in fevered dreams I surrendered to him with a smile.
A sudden merciless gust made my eyes bleed water. But suddenly I found myself at a dangerous state of contentment, of peace. It did not matter. However he came, I knew for a certainty that Death and I would meet tonight.